We do a lot of site audits at IVSEO, looking for ways to either improve our clients’ site performance or to gain recovery from a manual penalty or an algorithmic dampening. But for one or two clients out of ten, we find that an audit isn’t really necessary. In those circumstances, it’s usually because the site’s deficiencies exist in just one or two areas.
In our normal audit process, we look at more than 20 different aspects that can affect a website’s performance, but often, we can tell from the outset that a full-scale audit may not be necessary. When that’s the case, we’ll instead recommend a Snapshot – that’s sufficient to determine if and where deeper investigation is warranted, at a small fraction of the cost.
After we’ve performed our Snapshot review, we’ll spend an hour or so on the phone with the client, discussing in detail what we found. We’ll tell them whether we encountered enough deficiencies to make an audit worthwhile, and in what areas those deficiencies exist. We’ll also tell them how much impact those deficiencies may be having, so they can make an informed decision on whether they’d like us to perform a comprehensive site audit.
Our Snapshot is a “30,000 foot view” of the same factors we examine in an audit, which normally include:
- site architecture
- URL structure
- pagination
- navigation
- mobile responsiveness
- languages and structure
- status codes
- internal linking
- inbound link profile
- outbound linking
- meta data
- crawl and index
- sitemap
- .htaccess
- robots.txt
- semantic markup
- pageload speed
- image handling
- redirects
- canonicals
- browser compatibility
- content quality/quantity
- keyword usage
We report the indicators we find in each of these areas and explain the relative importance of each. We explain the risks associated with each deficiency and prioritize any corrective actions, as well as provide an estimate of how fast each change may be expected to gain traction.
Whether an audit is undertaken to resolve a penalty or dampening issue, proactively reduce the hazards of punitive action or simply to optimize your site’s organic ranking, an audit may be the most logical starting point. But first, you should ensure the cost is justified. Our Snapshot service will do that for you.
If the Snapshot indicates that a comprehensive site audit is called for, 100% of the cost of the Snapshot will apply toward the full audit. If you decide you want us to perform a full site audit, here’s what that will provide.
Whether we perform a Snapshot analysis or a full audit, our reports are not simply a relabeled version of some tool’s analysis of the site. While we utilize several tools to extract the necessary information, we manually analyze the data and present the report in our own format, tailored specifically for the site.
After we’ve delivered our report, we’ll schedule a call to go through it with the client point by point, clarifying any gray areas and answering any questions they may have.
Contact us today at Audits for your no-obligation cost proposal. We’ll get back to you promptly so you can start your site on its climb to higher rankings.